Brooke Nevils and Katie Curran O’Malley visit the Ivy Bookshop to discuss Nevils’ new memoir, Unspeakable Things, in an event benefitting the Women’s Law Center of Maryland. Through groundbreaking interviews with leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys, and frontline researchers, Unspeakable Things challenges our understanding of consent, power, and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Originating with Nevils’ own story, which helped to catalyze the MeToo movement, the book guides us through a nuanced re-examination of everything we think we know about sexual harassment and assault, starts a new conversation, and–for anyone who has ever felt ashamed, hopeless, alone, and afraid– provides a light in the dark. The mission of the Women’s Law Center of Maryland is to ensure the physical safety, economic security and autonomy of women throughout Maryland by providing direct legal representation, information and referral services, as well as legislative advocacy. Legal representation changes everything—WLC makes it possible for survivors to be safe, secure and independent. RSVP here! Order UNSPEAKABLE THINGS here! Brooke Nevils is an author, advocate and mother. Her book, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame and the Stories We Choose to Believe (Viking, 2026), is a vital examination of our most persistent and dangerous misunderstandings, myths and stereotypes about sexual harassment and assault. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Unspeakable Things weaves Brooke’s personal experience at the center of one of MeToo’s defining stories with groundbreaking interviews of leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys and frontline researchers to challenge our understanding of consent, power and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Brooke began her career in print journalism before joining the NBCUniversal Page Program in 2008. First a talent assistant and later producer to NBC News anchor Meredith Vieira, her work at the network included morning, evening and breaking news, primetime specials, news magazines, daytime talk, entertainment and longform news documentaries. In 2017, she made a confidential complaint to NBC News HR about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history was fired, stunning millions of Americans. After her identity was revealed by a tabloid, Brooke left NBC in 2018 and began a yearslong effort to confront both her own experience as well as the critical questions that MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered. She learned that nearly everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault—and how victims react to it—was wrong. Unspeakable Things is “a painstaking unravelling of the difficulty of defining consent the inherent dangers in power imbalances” (The Guardian), “employs Nevils’ journalistic background to take a scalpel to toxic newsroom dynamics and who t...
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